TechStuff Classic: Videos In the Stream

let's take a listen. There are a lot of different technologies out there that are all about streaming content over the Internet, your television or computer. Even YouTube. You could argue, is is it content provider? Oh sure, sure I can. I view YouTube all the time when I'm at home. There's this great series I love to watch at home on my big television. It's called Forward Thinking. It is amazing. The host is uber uber Hut and so I watched that all the time at home on my big television

and it's great. I mean, you know, it is filmed with a red one so so the I mean, yeah, actually we upgraded to a four km J to four K. I mean they went from to K to four K. So they're, like we said, a lot of different choices out there, but let's focus on probably the I would argue this is probably the most well known name. And in the interest of full disclosure, we're gonna be talking about Netflix, and Netflix has been one of our sponsors in the past. They are one of our sponsors for

tech stuff. But that we're just going to talk about the way that it works and how it kind of started. So if you look all the way back to ninete that's when the company Netflix formed, and at that time it was just kind of an idea. It hadn't even there wasn't a business there yet. That was really kind of the paperwork, so it wasted on paper. It wouldn't be until that they actually launched a subscription DVD mail

to home plan plan. Yeah, they were offering up rentals and sales, and but it was when the famous subscription service came in. That idea where you would make up a list of DVDs that you were really excited about seeing, and then they would send you one and it would sell on your coffee table for four months, and then you'd think, I never really got around to watching that, but I want to see the next thing on my list, and you send it back without ever watching. It was

that just me Okay, good, I'm glad it wasn't just me. Um, I swear I'm going to see The Prestige one day. Oh you should. I know. It's a terrific film. It's said on my coffee table for four months, and that's a that's a that's a shame. I know, I know. But anyway, they were strictly physical media at first. In fact, for most of their their existence if you look at the full timeline, Yeah, they didn't even debut their watch instantly feature until two thousand seven, and they did not

provide unlimited streaming content until early two thousand eight. Yeah, and two thousand seven it was incredibly limited, and even two thousand eight when you look at this is one of those criticisms that are that is often leveled by by people at Netflix, which is, you know, I look at what you have available on your DVD list, and then I look at what you have available on your instant library list, and y'all, there's stuff I want to watch that just like I can't see on that instant side.

And this is because there are some really complex deals going on in the back end between Netflix, which is a service provider, and the content creators that make the content to Netflix. So Netflix has to create and this is the same with other services as well. They have to enter into these agreements with various content creators to be able to broadcast stuff over streaming, the same way

that a cable channel would license to content. Right now, in the case with the cable company, very similar, anyway, very similar. In the case with the cable companies, they're looking at channels or bundles of channels. So but with you know, with Netflix, it might be it might be

a little more pick and choose. So instead of saying I want everything that MTV produces when it comes to their original content, I want every single show, it may be that I want these five shows that MTV produces, but that's the only five and the and in this case, those agreements can go through the instead of a cable company, where it's kind of an all or nothing proposition. UH, services like Netflix can enter into these agreements where they

get certain things but not other things. And in some cases it's not necessarily uh to the benefit of Netflix. It might be the case that the content creator says, you know, this is my best stuff and I want to make uh my money. Going through the traditional broadcast or cable route and then make more money through DVD sales whatever. Um, I don't want to provide this to your subscribers. So it's a very complicated dance that Netflix

has to do every time. It's trying to get more content, and obviously, from a consumer standpoint, you want there to be as much content in which ever service you are subscribing to. Also, to make matters even more complicated, there are issues about what kind of content can be shown where. So, in other words, if I'm a Netflix customer in Canada, the options I have are different than the ones I would have in the United States. If I were a customer somewhere else in the world, I would have that

same sort of issue. Right, And that's again because all of these licensing agreements are are very conditional. Yeah, some of them are conditionally regionally. Some of them are conditional based upon the type of equipment you're using to watch something on. Right. I don't think Netflix has that issue as much, but we will, but we will get into

that with some of our other discussions. UM As of thirteen, there are about twenty nine point eight million Netflix subscribers in the US and another seven point six million worldwide, um, which is which is up from twenty million at the start of so and so. And you know, to another judge of another way to judge how popular they are based upon, not just from a subscriber account, is how

much traffic Netflix generates on the interwebs. Right. Um, it supposedly Netflix accounts for one third of streaming video on any given day. Yeah. Um, that's that's twice what YouTube does. Yeah, and keep in mind YouTube. Now, YouTube is generating content at a crazy pace. We've talked about this. It's like a hundred hours of content every minute, So every minute that goes by, another hundred hours worth of content gets added to YouTube. But if you're looking at actual traffic

of people watching stuff, Netflix outstrips at three to one. Now, that might also be because a lot of the content on Netflix is long form and a lot of the content on YouTube is very short form, and Netflix provides a lot more in HD. Yes, that's also true. So in other words, those file sizes are are bigger for multiple reasons, not only because they are longer, as in they last longer, like it's a thirty minute show or

twenty minute but it's a larger file to begin like exactly. Um, as of November twelve, this accounted for about a third of all US downstream traffic. Uh. Yeah, this is uh. It's also why a lot of Internet provider companies i sp s are starting to talk about caps. Yeah, where they were like especially initially when Netflix Instant was starting off. Now, back then, there weren't as many customers who were taking advantage of it. I would say that this is something

that's really starting to explode. Over the last like maybe a year or two, we've really seen it like take off. Before that, there were early adopters who were very enthusiastic about it, and then there were a few other people who were curious about it, and some people had it, you know, added on as part of their DVD service and so they played with it once or twice. UM. Now that one of I think one of the things Netflix did that they did really well was they got

their app on as many different platforms as possible. It's one of the things I thought this company's very savvy. They know what they're doing. They're on Xbox there on, you know, PlayStation there on we They're on you know, computers, stale out, telephone and tablet use. Yeah, so smartphone anyway, exactly. Yeah, so they like to call up and listen to my favorite movies. UM No, they really were very savvy. They got in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and

that definitely helped a lot. Now, I haven't always been incredibly savvy. Back in back inn you guys might remember,

there was the entire quick Ster debacle. Netflix was just going to become streaming only in a new company called Quickster would be all the DVDs and and that was after another controversial thing where where they were um planning on on splitting the DVD and streaming plans with like a fifty over price hike to to get both of them, um, which was still I mean because it had originally been like ten bucks a month and I was going up to like sixteen month bucks a month if you were

going to have both DVDs and streaming, and that when they did push through, it almost makes me think that they were joking about Quickster in order to make the

other things sound out. I remember seeing Facebook explode when this happened, and Twitch exploded to I had friends who were immediately and vociferously proclaiming that they would leave Netflix never to return and burn the villages behind them, and so the ground was salt, whereas I was seeing, like, guys, I think you might be overreacting like that sounds like six dollars, But I mean, but stock fell from over three hundred bucks a share to two under a hundred

and Read Hastings, the CEO, the founder of Netflix, apologized publicly for it. He you know, this is not something that happens very frequently where you have a CEO offer up an apology. I mean Tim Cook did for Apple. That's like the only other one I can think of off the top of my head. So you've had you know, we've of course seen stories about ceo is admitting that certain products in the company's past was were possibly a

mistake or badly handled. But this was an outright apology to the public saying, you know, guys, um I was thinking it was a great idea. I clearly you guys feel differently. We are not going to do it, so don't worry. Yeah, but that was that was a big strike against Netflix at that point when they tried to

do the whole Netflix Quickster thing. Now, Netflix has made some pretty big deals, not all of them are exclusive deals, I should say, we're gonna be talking about some of the deals that they've made with various content creators so that they can be allowed to show certain types of

content on their channels or on their service. I should say, Uh, one of them, which was announced the day that we are or I think two days before we actually record this podcast, is an exclusive deal, and that is that Netflix and the Weinstein Company or Weinstein Company, depending on how you want to pronounce it, announced that they are going to enter a multi year premium pay TV window agreement in the United States starting in ten and that

Netflix will become the quote ex elusive US subscription television service for first run films from the Weinstein Company end quote. So this would include movies made under TWC, the Weinstein Company, and also Dimension Films, and that would become available to Netflix members who are subscribed to Netflix. So the interesting thing here to me is that, uh, it is exclusive. That means you're not going to find these same titles on the other services we'll be talking about a little

bit later. Uh. Now, that's not the only deal they've made recently. They made a big deal with Disney Netflix. Yeah, so that agreement starts in seventeen. We're talking long term goals here, folks. Now you might notice that there are some Disney titles now, right, which was part of this deal as well, But the larger percentage of Disney films

will be available beginning in twenty seventeen. Again not necessarily exclusive, but they will be available on Netflix and again depending upon where you are, because these the regional rules still are in effect here. Then you also have the deal Netflix made with DreamWorks. Now, that agreement begins in ten, so that's a little earlier. And we I have already seen some Dreamwork stuff available there too, but it's all kind of like they're second or third tier titles, I

would say, or sequels to movies that I like. I would watch this, but I haven't seen the first one and it's not available. Um, I'll have to wait till I suppose or get a DVD subscription. Now, you're just talking crazy talk, all right. So Netflix, of course is not the only one to make these deals, whether they're exclusive or not, in order to get content. That's kind of how the game is played, right, sure, sure, and and a lot of it is is kind of being

continually mixed up between these top three companies. There's there's like, for example, I think Amazon just stole Downton Abbey out from under Netflix. Um yeah, but like and I think for example, a Netflix had a deal with Viacom for a while and then they're letting the deal expire and they're not planning on renewing it. But other services are going to definitely work with Viacom. So it's it's going

to change over time. But there's something else that all these companies are doing too, right, Yeah, and and this is something that no one else certainly will have, and that is Netflix's original content. Um. This is and this is kind of a big deal because you know, up until up until um, none of these streaming service on demand companies were creating their own new stuff, right. They were. They were a pipe, but they weren't creating any of the stuff that was in the pipe. They were just

giving access to it. Um. But but as of February twelve, they they offered a show called Lily Hammer, which was a co production with a Norwegian producer and not that many people in the United States have probably even heard of it, and it was pretty big in Norway. But House of Cards came out. I don't have a date on that, but the House of Cards came out I think either. I think House of Cards came out late.

And that was the first US kind of I'm not gonna say blockbuster but um but but the first popular original show, right, And keep in mind, this was a remake of a show that was made in the UK, but the US version had Kevin Spacey in the lead role and that was a big which, Yeah, you know, you're talking about an award winning film actor playing a

part in a series that was doing something really different. Now, what Netflix was doing was not just producing this series, which would have been remarkable all on its own, and then giving the exclusive look at the series to its members. You could not watch it anywhere else other than if you were to maybe buy the DVD set, which you

can do. But they also offered up the entire series at one time, so instead of telling that like you do, you can just you know, crunch through the entire series you want a day or two if you want to just marathon it, you totally could because the first season of it anyway, first season of it. So this was a big difference from the way we usually can conto media because normally it's talking about something that's on a regular basis, it might be serialized. Yeah. So Kevin Spacey

actually had something to say about this. I've got a quote from him. Yeah, he says, I'm not gonna do it. Kevin Spacey up so much. Yeah. By the way, fantastic impressionist Kevin Spacey. Anyway, So here's what he had to say. Clearly, the success of the Netflix model releasing the entire season of House of Cards at once proved one thing. The audience wants the control, they want the freedom. If they want to binge, as they've been doing on House of Cards and lots of other shows, then we should let

them binge. I can't tell you how many people have stopped me on the street and said thanks, you sucked three days out of my life. So but I mean, that's that's an example of how this model worked. And they followed that up with other examples like Arrested Development season four YEP, which, by the way, I marathon when it came out, Hemlock Grove, which I did not watch.

I have not watched any of that either, or in Just the New Black, which I am currently I am only not watching it right now because I don't even know why. I'm surprised that I don't have it on in the background. I just started watching it last night. It's so good, guys. I've heard so many people tell me that's really really good. I have not. I have not started to watch it, but I've heard enough good things about it that I'm I'm willing to give it

a shot. It is it is for mature audiences, or for immature mature audiences, however, however you want to state that not for kids, right, not for kids. Let's let's put it that way, because I am not mature, and I thought you were just telling me that I couldn't watch the show. Um. They've got upcoming shows from from Mikeegervass, Derek um and since eight from the Wachowski siblings, the Wakawskis. Yeah, excellent.

So you know that's that's a big deal that this idea not only getting these exclusive deals from other content creators, but to create your own content. They're getting into this game. Uh. It's interesting also because the way Netflix generates revenue is through subscriptions, right, they don't they don't have ads in their shows and uh, and will contrast that with some of the other stuff that we'll talk about in a little bit. So there are no ads, and they're getting

it mainly through subscriptions. And from what I can tell, Netflix does not really let anyone know how many people are watching any given title necessarily unless it's a huge deal and they'll say, like, over x million people watch this one thing right there there. They're being pretty pretty under wraps about it. Yeah, So that leads you to wonder is the content creation business working for Netflix? Is that is that adding to their bottom line? Are they

getting more subscribers because of it? I think that's what they're trying to figure out right now. You know. They I read something that said that they could they could see themselves um doubling their current content output um in in the next couple of years and even going up to twenty pretty soon. And they're looking to get into a documentary production and stand up specials, even even which are Spanish soaps. Hodgeman's Ragnarok was a Netflix exclusive, right, Yeah, Yeah,

it was creative for them. They're they're being compared to to HBO, Showtime, AMC, these big cable heavy hitters, UM and uh Ted Serrando's the chief content officer, told g Q in February. The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us. Wow, that's interesting. That's a really good point because of course HBO does have its own Hbo Go service, but you have to be a

subscriber through cable package in order to access it. Yeah, you have to be a double subscriber, right, You have to subscribe to cable and you have to have a cable subscription that includes HBO in the first place before you can have excess HBO Go. So yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's really interesting. I mean, you know the production process.

These shows are going from pitch to series with no pilots in advance um, which is allowing Netflix to put money into projects that they really believe in, rather than playing the odds game of throwing up a single expensive episode to see whether or not people like it. They can they can really curate what they're putting out there. Yeah, it's interesting. And also because they don't have to sell it against ads, they don't have to worry about getting

support from from ad from different other companies. For example, for a show about women in prison that has a largely female cast and deales with a lot of gender issues. That's something that you probably wouldn't see on a lot of traditional cable companies. So um and and it's it's it's paying off in terms of critical acclaim. They just

got fourteen Emmy nominations for original content. Yeah, and that's, by the way, we should point out that the this year, this is the first time we're starting to see Emmy nominations for streaming video or something that was not created by cable or broadcast. Hey, guys, Jonathan from twenty here, we're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back. All right. So we've covered Netflix from beginning to end thoroughly. I think let's uh, let's move

on to a different one. Let's talk about Hulu and Hulu Plus. All right. So, um so Hulu period and not Hulu Plus launched in two thousand eight. It was it was a joint effort from NBC Universal and at that point News Corporation, you know, Murdox, Fox Fox Corporation exactly, um, which which was interesting in and of itself that these two major cable cable providers were playing nice. We're joining

forces to create something interesting. I don't know you watched those alec Baldwin spots where he would he was convincing everyone that who was really just a front for aliens to take over. And I'm like, how is this supposed to sell me on watching? I mean, I'm going to because now I got to find out what happens in these commercials. But right right, yeah, I know the commercials with him and Alianza Dick Shoo did those were great.

Hulu Plus launched in and that was the subscription based end. Now, what's one thing that says the Hulu and Hulu Plus apart from Netflix is unlike Netflix, WHU content is AD supported, right right? Um? And the the deals that they make with the content providers. Um. Some of them are for for a straight licensing fee, some of them are strictly AD revenue based, and some of them are kind of a sticky gray area. Yes, this gets super complicated just

in one example here. So you've got you've got shows that are to have ad breaks in them, whether it's in the subscription one or just the free version of the Hulu one. I believe that all content has ads in it, whether or not the content creator gets a share of the is the question, gotcha? So that's that's very that's that's very interesting all on its own. And then uh, on top of that, you know, you have deals with content creators that are different than the ones

from the other two. Like they're there, they have access to some content that the other companies do not have access to. Sure, and and Hulu is um if you're unfamiliar with the service, is um as opposed to Netflix, which has prior seasons that have perhaps gone to DVD

as an analog or um or films. Hulu does have a category of films, but is I think most of its traffic is from currently airing seasons of television, either either the entire current season to date or maybe the past five episodes, depending on what again with the licensing count.

So so, for example, a typical television show in the United States that also is carried on Hulu, the a couple of days after it airs on television, that episode could become available on Hulu and you might be able to watch as many as the last five for a lot of them. Right, So let's say that I'm following, you know, ex television show and I missed the last

two episodes because I was out of town. I could go on Hulu and catch up and and what and you know, be back up to speak, or if you don't have a cable subscription at all, and you could just watch it that way and just tell all your friends to not talk about the show for a couple of days so that it gives you a chance to catch up. Um. And if your friends are like mine, they will be happy to post lots of fakes boilers on your Facebook, the stuff that never happens. That's okay.

So but also like Netflix, and besides that these deals that are being made for content, Hulu is also in the content creation business as well as uh, you know, we can talk about some of the exclusives and some of the originals as well. I guess some of the exclusives they have all other exclusives are from other countries. Right, almost five five or six percent of its content are these exclusive international television shows. UM for example, Misfits or

pram Face. There's a Canadian drama called The Booth at the end. It helped fund production for BBCs The Thick of It. There's a whole bunch of Korean language dramas up there. And this is all because sometimes those international license fees can be cheaper, depending on what they are um and and it's also you know, it's it's really smart for on the content provider. And because I subscribed to Hulu Plus because I could get Misfits, I wanted

that show. That was the only place I could get that show other than ordering the DVDs, and so I did it. See I the only two titles I even recognized all of their exclusive list that I was just kind of I was glancing at like a layout of a bunch of their exclusives. The only two titles I recognized were Misfits because you've talked about it before and moon Boy and moon Boy because it has Chrystodaled in it Gills in the I T crowd, so I knew

about those. Chrystodal plays the imaginary friend of a little boy. So uh, yeah, it's great, you know, fantastic stuff. But that was produced in the UK, and uh and Hulu is the the exclusive provider in the States, so yeah. Beyond that, they also are creating their own content, including stuff like The Awesome's, which is a superhero comedy cartoon series. Right right. They began production of original stuff in August of eleven. Um there. Their first show was an interview

series by Morgan spurlock Um. Early twelve is when they their first scripted show, Battleground, And I think that they are also kind of trying to figure out where this original content is going to fit into their business model. They're they're kind of waiting to see, you know, whether people will bite and how well it will do, and since they are ad based, how that's going to affect everything.

Not to mention the fact that they are a branch of companies that are producing content on their own for other platforms because their owned ABC Disney is also part owner of them at this point. And so yeah, how do you how do you if you're creating content that's

in direct competition to her owners content. Yeah, that's a problem, right, you're talking about because now you're talking about there they could come up with an idea of saying, well, yeah, we can create this for Hulu, but why don't we create it for a different channel instead, if we have that option, or maybe they even start using Hulu as a testing ground for stuff that they aside too then

appropriate for television. We don't know because it's so early on with this experiment really or Hulu, but it is a little more complicated than Netflix. Netflix is its own independent company that is not beholden in this way to content creators. They're beholden in an entirely different way. Like they will come to a content creator and say I want that show and they say, you do not get this show, but you want the show to go somewhere else,

not you. Yeah, and that's this. Another interesting thing is that there's a lot of power struggles going on in this entertainment world. No one wants any of these services to become the dominant one because then that service has leverage over the content creators. So it's a constant chess battle right to see who is going to be the

one who has the advantage in these negotiations. Yeah, this is part of why if if, if you've tried to subscribe to Hula, you may have noticed that you cannot transfer all shows from your television box to your laptop tow your iPad. Um. Yeah, you might have limitations and maybe that certain shows you can only watch if you're watching it streaming to your TV because some some content providers have said nope, thanks, no, thanks, I don't want that on tablet. Yeah, you can't watch that when you're

on the train or whatever or driving to work. Don't watch TV while you're driving to work. Don't do that. Never do that. So so Hulu as of April had four million subscribers, which is is has doubled in the past year. It's still pretty shy of the thirty million in the US that Netflix has that's growing. It's Jonathan Frow again. We're going to take another quick break and then we'll be back to talk more about streaming video. All right, So that's Hulu Plus and Hulu We've we've

covered that. That leaves the other of the big three, and that's Amazon and Amazon Again, like all three of these are very different from each other. They have different approaches to the way that they handle intent, they have different approaches the way that they handle revenue. With Amazon Prime Instant Video, there are a couple of different things, like you can have actual access to a certain portion of their television shows and movies that are available if

you're an Amazon Prime member. That's a subscription based service that goes beyond just instant video, right right. It's not the same subscription that you would get just for Hulu

Plus or just for Netflix. This is tied into its other Amazon Prime shenanigans where you know, you get free or discounted chipping and all discounts on certain goods and services, can borrow kindle books, stuff like that's wrapped allaws wrapped up into is what we're getting at, yeah, yeah, which is which is I think somewhere around seventy five bucks

a year against seventy nine total. So when you when you look at it, it actually ends up being a little cheaper than some of the other services on a monthly basis. So in the United States anyway, seventy nine per per year. So so Amazon Amazon Prime Instant Video launched in February, and you know you can also use it to rent or buy titles separately, right, So there are some titles that are available for free viewing once

you have this. About about forty movies and television episodes are available with the prescription um subscription subscription why can't I say that word today? Um? And and about something over a hundred and fifty thousand titles are available per Yeah, if you want to actually purchase stuff or rent stuff,

and I've done I've done both. I rented titles through Amazon Instant and I've purchased titles on Amazon Instant so um and and the way it works is if you're renting it, if you have you know, you obviously need to watch it on something. You could watch it on a computer or tablet or in my case, I'm using a video game console and I'm watching it through there.

But if you rent it, essentially once you start watching it, that the timers on and you have a certain amount of time to watch it, but before it gets bleated from your your devices drive and you don't get to watch it anymore. If you buy it, of course it stays in the cloud and you have the access to it on whatever device as long as you're signed in as you you can watch the programming right. Um. They

also have exclusive deals. Like I mentioned earlier, they had nabbed down to Nabby from Netflix and they're starting something with Viacom. They've invested in a CBS show called Under the Dome um in exchange for a digital distribution, They've got exclusive rights to digitally distribute the show four days

after it airs on network TV. Yeah, so this is similar to kind of the way Hulu does things with some of their shows right where it airs on television and then within a certain amount of time afterward, depending upon the agreement, Hulu can then show it on their service. This is the same thing but on Amazon. Under the Dome is based off a Stephen King story, right, they are also producing their own original content, say what yeah, yeah true factum. As of in fact, they unveiled Amazon

Studios and started collecting scripts from the public. They opened up the process and we're just like, if you've got a good script, send it to pit. If you have a pitch, pitch it to us. And this is this is incredible. It does I mean, it means that you're going to get a lot of stuff, right, You're gonna get a lot of stuff that's not ever going to be producible. It's just gonna be things you read this like this might have been an interesting idea, but it's

a terrible script. Or this is a good script, but it's boring. And they took a certain number of those and and filmed pilots of them, and in put those pilots online and didn't use exclusively user feedback, but but took that into kill that into account. They let the members of Amazon Prime watch them and helped decide what they wanted to see. Proceed to a series. It's it's kind of a democratization of content creation, sort of like what you would see if someone were to pitch a

series on say Kickstarter. People pitched it, they shot the pilots, they showed them off, and some of them are now going to become actual series that will be available probably late. I saw that in the fall is when we can expect to see the first episodes of some of these shows. Right as of August, they had Alpha House and also Beta's. Wait wait, wait, wait, So they've got Alpha House and they have a show called Beta's. I actually just got that.

That's pretty silly that happened. And these are two different shows. It's not Alpha House and Beta's. It's Alpha House. And then there's another series called Beta's. I guess the last show will ever see will be Omega. That will be the last show that Amazon ever makes. And they've also got three children series and production the names of which I do not have in front of me. They were

looking specifically for comedies and kids shows. Well yeah, and then if you if you look at the different series, a lot of them have focused, especially recently on on children's programming, on on on comedy and children's programs like Amazon's. Amazon's deal with Viacom is largely based on children's programming

from things like Nickelodeon. Uh. Netflix has an entire section that's just like they had Netflix for Kids that they launched where you could create a little uh sub profile for your children so that they could easily find content from everyone from Disney to to Nickelodeon to I think Nickelodeon. Maybe Nickelodeon didn't have anything. Viacom and Netflix did have a deal, but like we said, they are letting that

deal uh uh end and they're not renewing. And also, have you know less of the more colorful content pop up in your kids video streams? Yes, yes you don't have to worry about, say the hell Raiser series showing up in sequence from there. I've been working my way through them and my pain is delicious. So anyway, um, yes, I just killed Lauren there. But yeah again, so we were seeing some more of these exclusive deals. We're seeing some more of this uh this specific content created for

the platform. I love what Amazon is doing here as far as creating a production studio and making it this opportunity for people who I wouldn't necessarily have a voice. Otherwise, right, they would have no way of getting into the industry. And now there's a chance for them to actually create something that could end up leading to a long career.

And you know, who knows, maybe the next fantastic storyteller, maybe the next Josh Weeden is in this group, and we can look forward to having his or her scripts produced and canceled mid season. Well hope, hopefully this entire this entire um strategy is going to avoid having things like like cancelations mid season. See, that's the other thing is that because of this approach, you no longer have excuses like a network moving a show around in a

lineup over and over again. That now lineups mean nothing. Right, You can also produce more than twenty four hours a day of content or way less if that's what you want to do, or if that's what you have money to do, right, and you can produce far more diverse content and uh and not have to worry about catering to a specific audience with a bunch of themed content. So that's one of the things we've seen with cable

channels where they struggle. They they create an identity for themselves where they create very specific types of content that are meant for a particular audience, but then they grow as far as they can within that niche audience, and to grow further means that they have to go outside that definition sci fi. So, uh, you know, this is something that they don't These these companies don't necessarily have

that problem. They can experiment with doing stuff. You know, we've seen with Netflix making drama and making horror as well as making comedy with the fourth season of Arrested Development. Amazon is doing it with children's programming, and this this alpha and beta stuff Hulu as Guide's own approach. It's I'm really excited about this because I mean, I love story and I love the idea of people who otherwise would not have had this content produced having this shot.

I think it's really a great moment for someone who is interested in consuming entertainment as well as people who want to produce it. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't have a number of the for for prime members like like I did for for Hulu and Netflix, because Amazon doesn't disclose that. Nope, they just say millions. It's in the millions, lots a bunch.

I I do think it's pretty interesting that Netflix transitioned its site to Amazon's cloud servers in so well, you know, Amazon definitely does do the provide resources to other companies. That's one of their biggest businesses. That doesn't have anything to do with the general consumer. I mean, when it comes down to a business deal, I can totally see them going, all right, you know, we're competing against you, but if you're gonna give us money, that works. Um. Yeah.

And it's interesting too. I see that. One of the other notes you have here is about how Amazon is expected to spend a billion dollars acquiring rights to programming to show on their instant, which is half of what Netflix is spending, which is so much money. Two billion dollars, folks,

that's just to get the content. See. So when you're complaining, and when I say you, I'm including myself in this, when you're complaining that the show you really want to watch is not available online, think of how much money these companies are having to pay and just to get you know. And it's because there's this complicated relationship between the content creators and also cable companies and their relationship

to content creators. That's one of the reasons why you're not going to find HBO in any of these for the time being. HBO's deals they're tied down. Yeah, HBO's deal with cable companies is so important and so lucrative that in order for HBO to break out of that and leave the exclusivity of these cable deals would mean that we would have to have an astra rhonomically good deal for HBO on streaming, because otherwise they're just losing money. And you don't go into a business to lose money.

I would hope. I mean, it might happen to you, but that's not why you get into business. Hypothetically, not economic or the producers. I was going to say, an economic masochist, but yeah, maybe if you're if you're if you're just trying to raise backing money and then immediately tank the company so that you can keep the backing money, you are not ethical, but you're also not really going into business. I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode

about videos in the stream. If you have suggestions for future topics I should cover on the show, reach out to me. You can do so on Twitter or Facebook. The handle at both of those is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H